


Childhood Possessions

by 8thCyn



Category: Supernatural
Genre: DeangoestoHell, Demon possession, Episode: s03e16 No Rest for the Wicked, Gen, Lilith (Supernatural) Possessing Their Child Vessel, Post-Possession, therealFremontgirl
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-05
Updated: 2018-06-21
Packaged: 2019-01-09 05:22:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 16,638
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12269739
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/8thCyn/pseuds/8thCyn
Summary: It is the night of "No Rest for the Wicked": the last day of Dean Winchester's life. We know what happened to Dean. We know what happened to Sam. We know what happened to Ruby, and to Bobby. We know what happened to Lilith.But what about the little girl that Lilith had possessed? Her parents? How do you move on after a nightmare like that?Can you?





	1. Chapter 1

_May 15, 2008_

I opened my eyes, and saw a strange man standing over me. He held a huge knife up, poised to shove it down.

Into me.

And my mother, with her arms around me, was tearfully whispering, “Just do it! DO it!”

He looked horrified, uncertain, but he clenched his jaw, and I knew he was going to. I screamed and struggled, but my mother held tightly to me. She wanted the man to kill me: the one person I loved more than anyone else in the world. I couldn’t understand.

Until I remembered.

I tried to scream out that it was me, but in my terror I couldn’t find the words.

Then another man rushed up behind the man with the knife. He looked into my face, and then quickly grabbed hold of the first man’s arm. “It’s not her! It’s not in the girl anymore!” he said urgently.

“What?” asked the knife man. His arms trembled a little bit as if he wasn’t sure what to do.

“I’m telling you, she’s not in there now!” yelled the second man.

“Then where is she?” asked the first one. He lowered his arms now, and I knew he wasn’t going to kill me after all.

My mother started to sob, and her grip on me went from trying to restrain me to holding me closely to her.

“Come on, we need to get you to someplace safe,” said the first man. “Follow us, and hurry!”

I could barely stand up, my legs were shaking so badly, but my mother pulled me along behind her as she followed them to the basement door. “Go down to the basement,” the second man said. “Your husband is down there. No matter _what_ you hear, do _not_ come out of the basement until we tell you it’s safe. Do you understand?”

My mother nodded, and gently pushed me in front of her, down the stairs. I heard the door shut behind us.

The look in my father’s eyes when he first saw the two of us was one of complete terror. He was afraid of me. I was still crying, but now I felt sick to my stomach. “Mommy, I think I’m going to puke,” I managed to say, between giant, gulping sobs.

She ran over and grabbed the trash can, and brought it over to me. My vomit tasted like a birthday cake that had been dipped in acid. I didn’t think I was going to ever want to eat another birthday cake for the rest of my life. My mother sat beside me, caressing my hair with her hand, while I threw up, and tried not to choke, since I was still crying, too.

“It’s gone,” I heard her say. “It let go of her.”

I threw up again, retching so hard that I couldn’t hear what my father said in response, but when I looked up, he didn’t seem convinced. “It’s me, Daddy,” I whispered when I could finally speak. “I don’t know what’s happening. What’s going on?”

“Shh Maddie. Everything will be all right,” my mother said, her voice shaking. She helped me over to the sofa, and sat, holding me close to her.

There was thudding coming from upstairs, like running footsteps. Sometimes there was shouting. I was so tired, I just wanted to go to sleep, but I didn’t think I would ever be able to close my eyes again without nightmares.

More footsteps.

More shouting.

And then… “Mommy, is there a dog upstairs? Why is it angry?”

I screamed and covered my ears as the dog growled and snarled and barked, but I could still hear, and I could hear one of the men screaming, as if he were in terrible pain. Other voices yelled, but I couldn’t hear what any of them were saying.

It went on for so long: the growling, and the barking, and the screaming. Then there was nothing.

“Is it over?” Daddy asked Mommy.

“I don’t know,” Mommy answered. “That man… he said he would come and get us when it was safe, and not to move until then.”

“We can’t just sit here forever!” Daddy said. “I don’t even… what do we… how do we… the… people up there…”

“Dan, please… let’s just wait a little while longer,” she said to him.

And so we stayed, huddled up on the couch. I finally dozed off, never deeply enough to dream, but just enough to rest a little bit. But I woke up when I heard the basement door open, and footsteps on the stairs. I was so frightened that I started to cry again. It was a different man now, older, and with a beard, wearing a battered baseball cap.

“We need to get you folks out of here,” he said, but there was no urgency in his voice. His eyes were red, and tired, like he’d been crying, or trying not to.

“Who are you?” my father asked.

The man shook his head. “That don’t matter. The thing that was here in your house, it’s gone now. But there’s still a lot of mess to clean up, and trust me when I say it’s better if you just let me handle it. Is there somewhere you can go? Family? Friends? A hotel?”

“I don’t want to stay here, Mommy,” I whispered. “Please can we leave?”

Mommy shushed me as Daddy spoke to the man, who said he would take Daddy upstairs to pack a few things for each of us, but Mommy and I were to stay where we were until they came back for us.

Daddy disappeared up the stairs.

“Mommy?” I asked timidly.

“Yes, Sweetie?” Mommy said, but she didn’t look at me, just stared up the stairs, waiting for Daddy and the man to return.

“I’m sorry, Mommy,” I said. “She made me… I didn’t want to…” I couldn’t finish the sentence. I couldn’t even begin to articulate everything I was sorry for.

The bearded man came to the top of the stairs and called us before Mommy could say anything in response.

“Look, it’s pretty bad up here,” he said as we reached the door. “We’re going to take care of it for you, but right now, I want you to follow me. I’m going to get your little girl out of here without her having to see all of this; that’s the important thing.”

Mommy nodded. He handed her a small blanket, then looked at me. “Now, Mommy is going to put that blanket over your head, okay Sweetheart? We’ll get you to the car all nice and safe, but just until you’re outside, it’s best if you don’t have to see some things.”

She put the blanket over my head, and started to guide me through the house. The air outside was cool, and the night was quiet. I could hear frogs and crickets as they pulled the blanket off, and tucked me into the back seat of the car.

“I’ll call your husband and let him know when it’s all right to come back,” the man said.

“I don’t think I ever want to come back,” Mommy said. I knew they didn’t think I could hear them. “What about the… the people inside?” she asked.

The man’s head drooped a little. “Like I said, we’ll clean it all up. Unfortunately, we have a lot of experience in that area.”

“But my father… what do we do? What do we tell people?”

“I’m sorry about your father, Ma’am. I am. But there’s nothing to be done about it now. Just whatever you do, don’t go telling people what really happened. Say he went on vacation, and didn’t come back, or that he moved to Florida, or anything else you can come up with. But don’t ever tell them the truth.”

“What _was_ it?” she asked.

“It doesn’t matter. It’s gone now, and it won’t be back.”

 

* * *

I pretended to be asleep as we drove away from our house. “What are we going to do?” Mommy asked Daddy. The radio on softly in the background, playing _Big Girls Don’t Cry_ by Fergie. I didn’t like that song anymore.

“We’ll sell it. Or if we have to, we’ll walk away from it. We can’t go back there. Not after everything.”

“But what about… Maddie?” Her voice lowered as she said my name and continued on. “How do we… the things she did… What are we supposed to say to her?”

“I don’t know,” Daddy answered. “Right now I can barely look at her.”

“Dan!” Mommy said, shocked. But even then she still whispered.

“What do you want me to say, Kristine? I know it wasn’t her - not really her, anyway - but it was her body. My little girl’s sweet little face, her voice…” His voice was trembling, and I was trying not to cry, hearing the things he was saying about me. “I don’t know how I’ll ever look at her again without seeing it.”

I waited for Mommy to defend me, but she didn’t say anything at all for a while. Then finally she asked, “Do you think she remembers it?”

Daddy sighed. “I don’t know. I hope not.”

I curled up tighter into a ball in the backseat, clutching the blanket, but still not looking up or opening my eyes.

I didn’t tell them, but I remembered everything.


	2. Chapter 2

_Two Weeks Earlier_

I was mad at Mrs. Henniger. She had told me that I could be in charge if there was an indoor recess that day, and when there was, she told Becky Keller that _she_ could be in charge of the class. And Becky never wanted to play 7-Up during indoor recess. She always wanted to have silent reading.

It was so unfair.

_Becky’s a jerkface. I’m glad she didn’t invite me to her birthday party. I wouldn’t want to go anyway._

Ever since my best friend, Maya, had moved away, school hadn’t been the same. Third grade was supposed to be awesome, but now it was awful. Maya’s parents didn’t even wait until after the Spring Fun Fair to leave, so Maya had to miss that, too.

And putting me into an even worse mood, I had three pages of math homework and a spelling sheet to do, and I was behind on my reading logs, and Mrs. Henniger had sent a note home to my parents about it. My mom was going to be mad.

The rain had stopped by the time school let out, so at least I didn’t have to walk home in the rain. I started to walk past Paddock Park, then saw the swings and decided to go and play for a while before I went the rest of the way home. I sat there, swinging and thinking about how angry I was, and watching the dark clouds swirl over my head. I knew it was probably going to rain again soon. We’d had a lot of thunderstorms in the past few days. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d seen the sun. But I wasn’t in any mood to rush home. If it started to rain, I’d just run.

Jacob Yardley came wandering by the park, and saw me at the swings. I froze, trying to decide if I should run or not. I never knew whether he would ignore me, be nice to me, or be absolutely rotten.

Most of the time it was the latter. This time, he stopped, stared for a minute, then started to walk towards me. “Whatcha doin’ Maddie?” he asked.

“Just getting ready to go home,” I muttered in response, hoping he would take the hint and leave.

“Good thing,” he said. “I felt raindrops a minute ago. It’s probably going to start raining, and you’re going to get soaked.”

“So are you,” I pointed out.

Jacob shrugged. He pulled a bag of M&Ms from his pocket. “Want some?” he asked.

I pursed my lips and narrowed my eyes, trying to decide if this was going to turn out to be a trick. But then he gave me that wide, sweet smile that he had sometimes, so I decided to take a couple.   
Biting cautiously into the first one, I watched him as he tossed a handful into his mouth. “Where’d you get them?” I asked.

“Found ‘em on the ground,” he replied. I nearly spit mine out until he grinned again. “Just kidding! My grandma gave them to me. I was going to have them at lunch, but then everyone would have asked for some, so I decided to wait.”

“Then why’d you give me some?” I asked, before popping another into my mouth.

“I dunno,” he answered.

I felt a few drops of rain on my arms, and looked up at the sky. “I’d better get going,” I told Jacob.

“That’s what I said,” he mumbled, shoving in more candy.

I grabbed my backpack from the ground beside the swingset. Jacob held out the bag of M&Ms and I took a few before waving goodbye and running towards my house.

 

* * *

Grandpa was waiting for me when I got home. “I was just about to drive over to the school looking for you, Princess,” he said as I came through the door, soaking wet. I had made it almost the whole way home before the sky opened up and buckets of rain came down on my head.

“Sorry Grandpa,” I told him. “I stopped at the park to play.”

He smiled at me. “Why don’t you go and change your clothes, and I’ll make us some hot chocolate? Then you can tell me all about your day.”

“That sounds good!” I said, and dropped my backpack before running upstairs to change.

My cat Freckles was sitting on my bed when I got up to my room. I sat down beside her, still soaking wet, and stroked the orange fur on her back until she started to purr loudly. She reached out and licked my hand, making me giggle. I kept petting her until she decided she’d had enough, and nipped at my hand. “Ouch! Freckles! You dumb cat!” I saw red bite marks on the back of my hand, and tears began to form in my eyes. Freckles just yawned and curled up in a ball to go back to sleep.

I stripped off my wet school clothes and put on a pair of pink sweatpants and a _Hannah Montana_ t-shirt before going back downstairs. I showed Grandpa the bite marks on my hand, and he kissed it better. We sat down together at the kitchen table with our hot chocolate and I told him all about how mean Mrs. Henniger was, and how much I hated Becky. He didn’t tell me that I was being mean, or selfish. He just listened. I loved that about Grandpa. Mommy would have told me that Mrs. Henniger was probably busy, and just forgot what she’d promised me, and that maybe Becky’s parents were only letting her invite a certain number of people. Moms have to be fair like that. Grandpas don’t.

After that, he let me watch TV right until Mommy got home, even though I was only supposed to watch one show.

I helped Mommy make dinner, but when I told her about my day, I only told her the good things. I could see that she was stressed out from work, and I didn’t want to upset her. Daddy came home a little while later, and we all ate dinner together: spaghetti with meat sauce, and garlic bread with lots of cheese on it. After dinner Daddy let me have an extra hour of TV (he still didn’t know about Grandpa) and then he read _Princess Gabriella and the Magical Snowball_ to me.

“Daddy, I forgot! You have to sign my permission form!” I said, just as he was about to leave the room. “If I don’t take it back tomorrow, I can’t go on the field trip!”

He sighed. “You waited until now to tell me this?” He gave me that “Dad” look. “Is it in your backpack? Go get it, but hurry up. You should be asleep by now.”

I raced downstairs to the hallway and opened up my backpack. The permission form was a little bit damp from the rain, and when I tried to pull it out, it ripped in half. Sobbing, I took both pieces upstairs with me and handed them to my father. “It ripped!” I cried.

Daddy took the pieces from me and looked at them. “You’re lucky,” he said. “The signature part didn’t rip, just the part we keep. I’ll tape that back together later. I’ll sign this and put it back in your backpack, okay?”

I hugged him tightly. “Thank you, Daddy. I’m sorry for forgetting.”

He smiled and hugged me back. “I know, Pumpkin. Now lie down and get some sleep.”

“I will, Daddy. I love you!”

“I love you, too. More than the entire universe,” he said seriously.

This was my favourite game to play with my father. “I love you more than infifnitty!” I told him.

“That’s a lot,” he said, and gave me a kiss on the head. “Now go to sleep.”

“Good night, Daddy.”

“Good night, Princess.”

I lay down, snuggling with the stuffed bunny my grandma had given me when I was a baby. She had died when I was little, and I didn’t remember her much, but I loved that bunny.

I fell asleep pretty quickly, but I woke up a few hours later feeling hot, sore, and cranky. “Mommy!” I called out, but my voice was scratchy, and I knew she wouldn’t hear me.

I was about to get up and go look for her, but then I saw the smoke swirling out of the air vent high on my wall. Scared, I was about to run, thinking that maybe the house was on fire. I started to cry, but it made my throat hurt, and I started to cough. The swirling smoke suddenly descended from the ceiling at a rapid rate, and as I coughed, I felt myself knocked backwards as the smoke forced itself into my mouth.

Then everything went black.

 

* * *

When I woke up, it was still dark, and something had happened to my night light. I couldn’t see anything at all, and I started to cry for my mother, but no one came, and no one answered. Terrified, I felt around on my bed until I found my bunny, and held it close to my chest.

A bright light appeared in front of my eyes; so bright I had to hide my eyes.

“Madeleine,” said a gentle voice. “It’s all right: you can look now.”

Cautiously, I opened my eyes, and in front of me was the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen. She had long, blonde hair that fell to her waist in waves, creamy pale skin, and big, innocent looking blue eyes. There was a light behind her still, but it wasn’t so blinding anymore.

“Are you an angel?” I asked. Then, terrified, “Am I dead???”

The woman laughed. “No, Madeleine, you’re very much alive. And I’m not an angel. My name is Lilith.”

“Why are you in my room?”

“I’m not in your room, not exactly. Maddie, I’m a spirit, and I’m sharing your body at the moment.”

I shrank back on the bed, horrified. I wanted to run, but I didn’t know where to go. “You’re a ghost, and you’re… inside me?”

“Sort of,” she answered. “I have very important work to do, and I need a human form to do it. You are very, very special.”

“I don’t want you to be in my body!” I told her, panicked.

“I’m sorry, Maddie, but you don’t have a choice. Sometimes spirits need permission to use a human’s body as a vessel, but I don’t. And if you fight against me, I will have to punish you. Do you understand?”

“No! I don’t! I’m just dreaming… this is just a bad dream. When I wake up, you’re going to be gone!” I insisted.

Lilith sighed. “Very well then. Go back to sleep. I have work to do, and I don’t have any more time for this. It’s better this way anyway.” And she lifted a hand towards me. The white light returned, and I lost consciousness.


	3. Chapter 3

The next two weeks were, quite literally, Hell. At first Lilith left me in a sleep-like state inside my own body, and I didn’t know what was happening. But once in a while she would wake me up to talk to me, in that same sing-songy gentle voice. She always said she wanted us to have a good time while we were together, that she had important work to do, and that I was helping her do it.

I never understood why she did it, because it must have been easier for her when I was unconscious. Every time she let me wake up, I would fight and fight to regain control of my body, until she crushed me back down. She’d tell me that I needed discipline, and then she would let me see what was happening outside of my body, as a punishment, I suppose. 

I couldn’t speak, I couldn’t control my body, but I could see everything. The first time, Lilith got up from the sofa in my playroom, where she had been watching TV, and skipped out to the front hall.

She saw my father talking to Mrs. Vandermere just inside the front door. He looked nervous, scared even. I tried to call out to him to watch out, but he couldn’t hear me.

“Daddy, why is _she_ here?” Lilith asked him in my voice.

“Oh, Sweetie,” he started to say. I could see beads of sweat forming on his forehead. “Daddy forgot that he asked Mrs. Vandermere to babysit tonight, because Mommy and I had tickets to a play, and Grandpa had a meeting. I forgot to tell her that our plans changed, and we didn’t need her now.”

Lilith looked over at Mrs. Vandermere, and so did I. Then she looked back at Daddy. “Why did you all want to go out tonight, Daddy?” she asked. “You should want to be home with me. It’s my birthday! Don’t you love me?”

“Of course I do,” he protested, his voice shaking.

Mrs. Vandermere looked confused. “Maddie, your birthday is in November,” she said.

Lilith stared at her with a look of contempt. She raised my hand, and with a careless gesture snapped Mrs. Vandermere’s neck.

“I don’t like babysitters. They’re mean,” she said, as Daddy tried not to gasp in horror. “Come on, Daddy! It’s almost time for cake!”

* * *

For days I screamed, and cried, and raged against Lilith, but all it did was make her angry. So after a while I stayed quiet. I gagged when she made me eat birthday cake every day for over a week. I cringed when she yelled at my parents and my grandfather. I watched as she carved scratches into my mother’s back, and turned my father’s pasta into maggots. I didn’t fight when she wore all of the frilly dresses I hated, then rolled around in the dirt or spilled juice all over them.

I tried not let myself see Mrs. Vandermere’s rotting corpse on the floor of the front hall, but I could smell it.

The longer she was inside of me, the worse it got. She was waiting for something; she never told me what it was, but she was impatient, and it her anger grew worse with every passing day. She no longer even tried to pretend that she was there for anything good.

I saw my family, terrified of me - even though they seemed to instinctively know it wasn’t actually me. My father cautiously approached me to ask if he could “please” go to work, “so I don’t lose my job.”

“Why would you want to go to work, Daddy?” she asked. “Don’t you want to be with me?”

“Of course I do…” he’d mumbled, but it wasn’t enough for her.

She flicked my hand, and he flew against the wall. My mother stared at me, and I knew she only saw a monster. Didn’t she know I was trapped in there? Why wasn’t she helping me?

But the worst day was still to come.

* * *

She knew.

Grandpa said he was just going outside to get the mail. She let him go, after making him promise to come inside and play with her afterward.

She watched him go outside, then skipped upstairs to my room. Freckles was on my bed. He didn’t like her. He knew it wasn’t me. He hissed and started to run away, but then she tossed him up in the air. She giggled and laughed as she made him turn somersaults.

But what she did after that, I can’t even talk about. I begged her not to… I tried to hide so I wouldn’t have to see or hear it, but she wouldn’t let me. By the time I went downstairs, that stupid frilly dress was all covered in blood. She told me to shut up, to stop crying like a baby. Then she made me go to sleep so I wouldn’t bother her.

It was almost dinnertime the next time she woke me up. Her “birthday” again. She sat down at the dinner table, bubbly and happy, facing my terrified family and enjoying every moment of it. Then, without warning she turned to Grandpa. “Hey Grandpa, can I ask you something?”

He hesitated on slightly before answering, “Sure, Jelly Bean. Anything.”

“Why did you try to go to Mr. Wayburn for help?”

_NO NO NO NO NO!!!_ But she’d known all along. She’d just been waiting for the right time, and now she was going to punish him. I sobbed, I pleaded. Punish me instead! Don’t hurt Grandpa!

“I didn’t. I don’t know what you mean.”

_Leave him alone!!_

She scowled at him. “You’re a big fat liar.”

“I’m sorry,” he said. “It was a mistake.”

_Stop it stop it stop it stop it stop it!!!_

She looked at my parents. “Did you two know about this?”

They looked at each other, purposely avoiding looking at Grandpa. Daddy looked down at the table.

“No,” he said.

“No,” Mommy said weakly.

Grandpa looked terrified now, and so hurt that Mommy and Daddy weren’t helping him. Part of me wanted to yell at them to help him, but at the same time, I didn’t want Lilith to hurt all of them. I was hysterical.

“Grandpa, don’t you love me?” she asked him.

“I do. I do love you!” he insisted.

She shook my head. “No, no you don’t. You’re just a mean old man.”

“Do something. Help me. Please!” he pleaded to my parents.

_LEAVE MY GRANDPA ALONE!!! HE IS JUST SCARED. WHY CAN’T YOU JUST GO AWAY AND LEAVE ALL OF US ALONE?_

Time froze in the real world, as Lilith turned and spoke to me. “Be quiet, Maddie. They are almost here; it’s almost time, and he could have ruined everything. He’s just lucky I don’t have time to play, the way I did with Freckles.”

_NOOOOOOOOOO!!! Please, just stop! He won’t do it again! PLEASE!!!_

“I don’t think I like you anymore,” she said, and seconds later, my grandpa’s head snapped to the side, and he fell forwards on to the table. I could barely hear my parents’ stifled cries over my own howls.

“Nobody scream, okay? Screaming makes me mad,” Lilith said to my parents, but I knew she was talking just as much to me. 

Then all of a sudden she was happy - happier than I’d ever known her to be. “Can I have some ice cream with my cake?” she asked; her cheerful voice had returned. While my mother shakily served up cake and ice cream, Lilith spoke to me. “They’re here now. It’s almost done. You can go to sleep for a while.”

I didn’t remember anything more, until Lilith whispered in my ear to wake up, and I saw the man about to kill me.

* * *

_May 16, 2008_

I woke up the next morning in a strange bed, in a room that smelled of stale cigarette smoke and sweat. I could hear my parents whispering behind me. “She’s your daughter, Dan!”

“You think I don’t know that? But she also just killed my father last night!”

“How many times am I going to have to remind you: that wasn’t her!”

“I know that! But it’s hard to distinguish when whatever it was was using her body!”

I heard someone sit down, springs squeaking. I didn’t want to turn over and let them know I was awake. “It’s not her fault. We can’t punish her for what that thing did. What are we going to do, send her to jail? Ground her?”

Daddy sighed. “I know… I know. What was that thing anyway? How do we know it won’t come back?”

Mommy lowered her voice even further. “The man who helped us get out of the house last night, with the beard, he said it was a… a… demon. He said they don’t usually come back to the same… body again. Especially this one. But that was all he had time to say before we left.”

“But why her? Why us?”

“I don’t know.”

* * *

The bearded man called my parents, and told them it was safe to go back. He and his friends had cleaned everything up. He didn’t go into specifics of what that meant, but when my parents were finally brave enough to go back, there was no sign at all that anything had happened. Other than the fact that Freckles and my grandfather were gone - just disappeared from our lives, never to be mentioned again. Mrs. Vandemere’s children had reported her missing, but the police had no clues at all to go on.

Since Lilith had left, my mother had been overly attentive, while my father barely even acknowledged me. He let my mother take me upstairs to my room to pack a few things, and pack for herself, while he went and packed his own. He had rented us a small apartment to live in until we could sell the house, and decide where we would move to. We would pack up what we needed for now, and later on we’d let the movers pack anything else we wanted to keep, and throw away what we didn’t.

My legs started to shake as soon as we entered the house, and I barely made it up the stairs to my room. Even though I knew everything was clean, I still saw blood everywhere. And it smelled too clean. Mommy and I packed up pajamas, and socks and underwear, play clothes and school clothes. She opened the closet full of dresses. “You know what?” she said to me. “Why don’t we give those away? You never liked them anyway, did you?”

I nodded gratefully. I never had any intention of wearing a dress again.

“It’s going to be fun, don’t you think? Starting over in a brand new house? In a whole new town?” she asked me, a little too cheerfully.

“Yes Mommy,” I answered, knowing it was what she wanted to hear. I didn’t want to be in that house, but I also didn’t want to leave my school, my friends. I thought about Jacob Yardley, of all people, and wondered what he would think when I just disappeared. Would Becky be happy?

In the end I didn’t want to take very much. It seemed like everything I picked up, I remembered Lilith touching, and it seemed soiled and evil now. I had a suitcase of clothes, and a single box of toys, and a box of books. I didn’t take the book that Lilith had forced Mommy to read over and over again. I never wanted to see it again, and I knew Mommy didn’t, either.

“Let’s go put these in the van,” Mommy said. “Do you want to help me pack the dishes?”

“Sure,” I replied. She gave me a sad smile, and we took our boxes outside.


	4. Chapter 4

_September, 2013_

“C’mon, let me have another puff. Stop hogging it!” Brandon was getting mad now. “I’m the one who stole it from my dad, and you’ve barely let me have any!”

I took another drag and blew the smoke in his face, laughing as I did, before handing it over to him.

“You’re such a bitch sometimes,” he grumbled as he put the cigarette up to his lips.

“Yeah, whatever,” I said, fumbling around in my backpack for the pack of gum I kept in there. The smell on my clothes would mostly be gone by the time I walked home, but the smell on my breath was harder to hide. “If I’m such a bitch, why do you keep hanging out with me?” I found the gum and popped a piece into my mouth.

“You know why,” he said. He took another long drag, holding it for a second before blowing it out slowly. “But seriously, I’m taking a risk here. If I’m going to keep doing this, you’re going to have to start doing more for me.”

“One cigarette to share between us every couple of days isn’t that much a risk,” I pointed out. “10 seconds over my shirt is more than fair.”

“If he finds out, he’s going to kick my ass,” Brandon said, stomping out the butt with his sneaker. He took a quick glance around to make sure we were still alone. “Besides, we’ve been doing this for a month now. The least you could do is let me under your shirt.”

I grinned at him. He was so easy. “You gotta do more for me, first.”

“Like what?” he asked suspiciously.

“A beer. _Each._ And five cigarettes, just for me.”

“Are you frigging kidding me, Maddie? Do you know how hard that would be? Do you have any idea what he would do to me if I got caught?”

I gave him a peck on the cheek. “Then don’t get caught,” I said, and started to walk away.

“Okay, I’ll do it. But you’ve got to give me more than just under the shirt,” he called after me.

I turned around with a sigh. I really wasn’t interested in doing anything more for him, but I had no other way of getting the stuff. “Like what?”

“I want to see ‘em. You have to take your shirt and bra right off. And I get 30 seconds to touch.”

“You’re insane. Even if I was going to do that, I’m not taking my shirt off in the middle of the damned park,” I said, waving my arm around to point out where we were standing.

“I know somewhere else we can go, where no one would see us.”  
“You’re such a hornball,” I said, disgusted. But I was dying for a beer, and getting a few puffs every couple of days wasn’t enough anymore. Five smokes to keep would at least get me through a few days.

“So you’ll do it?” he asked. Now he was grinning.

“Get the stuff first, then we’ll talk,” I told him. But I already knew I would.

He walked over to me, and gave me a kiss before I could protest. He stuck his tongue in my mouth, and I could taste the cigarette on him, mixed with the mint of the gum in my mouth. His hand squeezed my left tit, and his thumb brushed across the hardened nipple.

“What the hell, Brandon?” I said pushing him away. “You already got your ten seconds.”

He grinned again. “That’s just incentive before I risk my life,” he said, then turned and walked the opposite direction.

 

* * *

I walked in the door, and threw my backpack on the floor. Mom wasn’t home yet.

Dad hadn’t been home in years.  
We’d still been living in the apartment when he just didn’t come home. Eventually he contacted Mom, arranged for a divorce, child support and so on, but I never saw him again. He sent Mom a letter to give to me, but when she did I put it away and never opened it. Eventually I threw it out.

Mom and I had moved since then, but we never managed to buy another house. She had really bad problems with anxiety, and sometimes she’d have to take a month or more off of work if it got really bad. So we had lived in a string of apartments. We’d only been in this one since the beginning of the summer, but at least I hadn’t had to change schools again.

Sauntering over to the fridge, I looked inside to see what there was for my dinner, since Mom had to work until 10:00 pm. _Leftovers. Blech._ I found a part bag of potato chips in the cupboard, and took that with me, along with my backpack, to my room.

I had homework to do, but I didn’t really care. There was nothing on television. My friends were all at home with their families, eating dinner. With a sigh, I pulled out my math book. If I got through the 9th Grade, it would probably only be because of boredom.

I’d been a good student, once upon a time. Before Lilith. But between changing schools three times in the past five years, nightmares that kept me awake for days at a time, the loss of my family, my home… I just stopped caring. I was counting the days until I turned sixteen and could drop out. But at the same time, I wasn’t sure when it came down to it that I’d really be able to. My mom was the one person who had stuck by me, even if she could be clingy at times, and I wasn’t sure that I could disappoint her that badly. I’m sure I was more than enough of a disappointment.  
So I finished my math homework.

 

* * *

_December 2013_

“Mom, please stop crying,” I begged.

She sat up, looked at me, sniffled, and I thought she’d be okay. Until she glance down at my report card and started to sob again.

“Mommy, please, please stop. I promise I’ll try harder. I’m so sorry, Mommy, really I am!” Her tears always turned me back into a little girl. I’d be humiliated if any of my friends heard me calling her “Mommy.” I tugged at her sleeve, trying to get her attention..

“I know you will, Honey. I know you will,” she finally managed to get out. She reached her hand around to pat my hand still on her opposite arm. “But maybe… maybe we should go back to Dr. Sharpe… maybe that would…”

“No,” I said, point-blank. “There’s no point. She can’t help.”

“But Maddie… I hear you having nightmares. They’ve gotten worse, and…”

“I said no.” My voice wasn’t that of a thirteen-year-old girl. Sometimes I just couldn’t hide how much older my soul was than my body’s physical years.

“All right.” In comparison, my mother’s voice was very small.

“You know there’s no point,” I said gently. “No one will ever understand it - they’ll never understand me - so how can they help us? I’m tired of wasting my breath trying. But I promise Mom… I’ll do better.”

“I know you will,” she said. I hated how exhausted she sounded. I hated that part of me really didn’t care. Then she said the one thing I truly hated: “I know how hard it’s been since your father left…”

“I don’t want to talk about him!” I snapped immediately. “He has nothing to do with this.” I saw my mom cowering from my outburst of temper, and tried to soften my face. “I’ll do better, I promise I will.”

I didn’t want her to be scared of me, I really didn’t. Sometimes I wondered if Lilith had left a part of herself inside of me, and that was why these things happened. I mean, I had every reason to be angry at the world - at the universe, but I didn’t have a reason to be angry at my mother.

But sometimes I was, anyway.

I was still afraid to go to sleep at night. I was certain that I always would be. Because I was sleeping when Lilith possessed me, and who knew if she would do it again? That man had told my mother that she wouldn’t, but how did he know?

 

* * *

_“Hello Madeleine, how are you?” It’s been a long time.”_

_I back away from her, but she just smiles and laughs at me. “What are you going to do? Back right out of your own head?” She laughs again; it sounds like bells tinkling. “Of course, it wouldn’t be the first time someone has done that to avoid me, but I don’t think you want to end up like them… drooling, staring into space… just gone, forever.”_

_“Get away from me you evil bitch!” I yell at her._

_“Now is that any way to treat a guest?” she asks._

_The tinkling bells make my skin crawl. I hate her. I’m going to kill her. Instead of backing away, I run straight at her, roaring my anger, prepared to pummel her with my fists, since I have no other weapons. I will bite, kick, scratch, punch… anything to make her go away._

_But she just raises a hand and carelessly flings me away from her, the same way she once did to my father. “You didn’t really think that would work, did you? You of all people should know better than that by now.”_

_“Then just kill me already! I won’t let you use my body to hurt people again!”_

_That evil, horrible smile creeps across her face again. “It’s so cute that you think you get a choice in the matter. Just give in to it, Madeleine; we could have so much fun together if you do. You would be unstoppable. No one would ever hurt you again.”_

_“Shut up!”_

_“Well, if that’s how you want it…” she starts to say, but then there’s a flash of light…_

…and I woke up, drenched in sweat and tears. My hair is damp and matted to my head. But she’s not there. It was just a dream… I think.

I hope.


	5. Chapter 5

_Spring 2015_

I sat in the chair outside the Principal’s office, slouched down and scowling. Yet another meeting. _Whoop-dee-fucking-doo._

It was nearly lunchtime, and I’d been sitting there since fifteen minutes into first period, but no one had said why. I figured that there must be someone even worse than me in there, and it was taking a long time. Or they’d forgotten about me.

Chancing a glance over at the secretary, her head was down, and she was writing something, not paying any attention to anything going on in the rest of the office. I sucked in a breath, and tried to stand up as quietly as I could, hoping to make an escape.

Except that after sitting for so long, the back of my legs were stuck to the vinyl covering the chair seat, and made a ripping noise as my skin attempted to detach itself. The secretary’s head popped up, she raised an eyebrow, and pointed one finger downward.

I sat back down with a huffy sigh and an exaggerated eye roll, wondering if I might be able to make another attempt soon. Before I could make any concrete plans, though, the office door opened and

Ms. Rollins motioned for me to come in. She didn’t bother saying anything to me: I was such a frequent flier that I knew the drill.

If I’d been in the mood to do what I was supposed to, I would have immediately sat down, but I was irritable after being left sitting there for so long, so I walked over to the window instead, and stared out at the gym class tripping over hurdles on the track outside.

“Madeleine, sit down please,” Ms. Rollins said curtly.

With a careless shrug, I did as I was told. I always found that a multitude of little irritations worked better than poking at the same spot over and over again.

Ms. Rollins sat down in the chair behind her massive desk and leaned back. “So, what’s the excuse this time?” she asked, sounding tired.

“My dog ate my homework,” I replied with a sneer.

“Really? That’s it? I expect better of you,” she replied, raising an eyebrow. “Something along the lines of body snatchers, or demon possession, or…”

“Shut up!” I snapped, my heart pounding in my chest. She didn’t know; she _couldn’t_ know.

She _didn’t_ know. In fact she looked shocked at my outburst: I’d often been belligerent, but never that abrupt about it. Upon a moment’s reflection I realized how weird it would seem that I would get so upset over an offhand comment like she’d made.

“I’m sorry,” I muttered, looking down at my hands.

Sighing, Ms. Rollins sat up. “Madeleine, I don’t know what to do anymore. I think we’re going to have to discuss the very real possibility of expulsion.”

I shrugged. “Okay, discuss away,” I said. I’d been expecting it; it was only a matter of time.

But Ms. Rollins shook her head. “We can’t discuss it without a parent here. We tried to call your mother…”

“My mom’s away,” I said quickly. She’d been in the hospital for the past few weeks. Another breakdown. I’d already started packing up my stuff, assuming that we’d get kicked out of yet another apartment sooner rather than later.

“Well, that explains why we couldn’t get a hold of her. We tried for quite some time this morning, but no one was answering at home, or on her cell phone.”

“She’s in Europe. She didn’t want to pay for roaming,” I said, the lie slipping easily off my tongue.

My principal wasn’t stupid, though, and she knew I was lying. Then again, I think she’d figured out that it was easier to just always assume I was lying.

“Luckily, we managed to track down your father, though, so he’s…”

My head started to swim, and I thought I was going to throw up. “No,” I said, my voice dangerous and low.

“He’s on his way,” Ms. Rollins finished; it was possible she hadn’t even heard me.

“I _don’t_ want to see _him_ ,” I said, a little louder, but just as deadly. “I’m out of here.”

I stood up and started towards her office door.

“Madeleine, sit back down now!” she barked from behind me.

Whirling around, I yelled, “I’m not staying if he’s coming here, you stupid bitch! He has nothing to do with me, and I don’t ever want to see him again! Do you understand me?” And for good measure, I picked up a paperweight sitting on the credenza beside me and chucked it at her.

“Miranda! Call security!” Ms. Rollins yelled as I picked up whatever else was within reach and began to throw it, not even aiming at anything in particular. I was in such a fury that I had no idea what I was doing, or who I was trying to hurt.

Tears streamed down my face as I screamed incoherently. I could barely see as lights exploded in front of my eyes, and inside of my head. Finally, when I couldn’t reach anything more to throw, I realized that I needed to get out of there, before he showed up. _I should have left sooner! What if he’s out there now?_

I flung open the door and started to race out of the general office area, but before I could make it to the door, the school security guards entered, and grabbed hold of me. “Let me go!” I snarled, flailing arms, legs, and everything else I could to try and get them to loosen their grasp.

“I’ve already called 911,” I heard the secretary say behind me. I didn’t care. I was going to be long gone before anyone could stop me. I threw another useless punch, feeling fingers digging into my skin, holding me tightly.

“Just calm it down,” one of the security guards wheezed, clearly getting out of breath. “You’re not doing yourself any favors here.”

I felt my legs lift off the ground, and I kicked out one foot, making a lamp shoot off a nearby desk. An arm was close enough to my face that I leaned forward and bit down as hard as I could; I heard one of the guards swear and felt some of the limbs attempting to restrain me release.

Sirens sounded outside the building.

A crowd had gathered outside in the hallway, looking in. Some were laughing, some looked horrified.

And there, in the middle of it all, stood my father. He looked at me, and his eyes were wide and frightened.

He turned around, and pushed through the crowd to walk away.

“Daddy!” I called out, and then everything went black.

* * *

 _How long have I been here?_ I had no idea. I didn’t know if it had been hours, or days, or weeks… or longer. I existed in a sort of haze, when I wasn’t completely unconscious. I could hear other people yelling, or crying, or just screaming endlessly, but it didn’t bother me. It all blended together.

In any of my more lucid moments, when I was close to “needing” another dose from the nurses, I wished I could just die, so it would all be over. I didn’t want to live anymore. If I could, I would do it myself, but I couldn’t even stand up, much less find something to use to slit my wrists, or poison to swallow, or tie something around my neck.

At first, I remembered fighting them, like I had at the school. I suppose that’s why they had been drugging me ever since.

The nurse came inside. He wasn’t a big man, but I was afraid of him. I knew every time he came into my room, he’d shoot me with another needle. I curled up into a ball on my bed, whimpering for him to leave me alone. He walked around the room, checking my chart, and ignoring me completely. Then he left the room, and he hadn’t touched me. I was almost more frightened about that.

But then he came back in, pushing a wheelchair. “Okay, Maddie. You’re going for a little ride, to go and see Dr. Whalen; she wants to talk to you. That is, assuming you can be a good girl. You can do that, right? Because if you can’t…” He patted a pack around his waist; he didn’t even have to tell me what was inside.

I tried to speak, but my mouth was so dry that I couldn’t do it, so I just nodded. I didn’t know whether to be more frightened of staying there and being drugged again, or going to see some unknown doctor. But the idea of a respite from the brain fog was at least slightly comforting.

I went to stand up, and nearly fell, my legs were so unaccustomed to being used. The nurse caught hold of me and dropped me into the chair, then lifted my feet into the foot rests, and we were off.

The fog started to clear a bit more out in the hallway - it was very different from the room where I’d been held, locked in, and initially restrained to my bed. It was my first time seeing that there were other people, other than the few nurses and orderlies who came in and out of my room, bringing me food that I barely ate, taking me into the bathroom, washing me in the shower since I was unable to do anything for myself with all of the tranquilizers in my system. And always, administering more drugs.

By the time the wheelchair stopped in front of a door, I was more lucid than I’d been since the moment I’d arrived. The nurse came around and looked at me sternly. “No funny stuff. Security will be right outside, and I can be here in seconds with this.” He patted the pack again.

I nodded again. He knocked on the office door. It opened, and a kind looking woman with curly brown hair and very red lipstick walked out into the hallway. “Maddie,” she said warmly, “are you ready for a little chat?”

“Yes,” I croaked out. The doctor gave a little nod to the nurse, who wheeled me into her office.

“I think Maddie would be more comfortable on the sofa, don’t you, Maddie?” she asked. Without waiting for me to reply, the nurse wheeled the chair over towards it, then pulled me up and let me down onto the couch. After that, he pushed the chair off to the side, and left the room, shutting the door behind him.

The doctor walked over to a mini-fridge, and took out a bottle of water. “It sounds like you could use this if we’re going to really be able to talk,” she said, handing it to me. I opened it up and drank greedily. It was empty in seconds.

“Feel a little better?” she asked.

I nodded. “Yes,” I said; it was a little easier to get the words out now, but my tongue was still feeling like a partially inflated balloon, which still posed issues.

“Good,” she said. “Because I’m hoping we can get to know each other a bit today.”


	6. Chapter 6

I stared at her without speaking, careful to keep my face neutral. I had no reason to trust her, none whatsoever.

“Maddie?” she asked, raising an eyebrow at me.

“Okay,” I said finally, worrying that if I didn’t say something the nurse would just come back and shoot me full of more drugs.

“My name is Dr. Whalen,” she said.

“I figured,” I told her.

“How did you know that?” 

“The nurse told me that was who he was taking me to see.”

She nodded. “That makes sense. So, why don’t you tell me a little bit about yourself.”

“Well, my name is Madeleine Fremont. I’m sixteen years old, and I’m a Scorpio and I like long walks on the beach…”

“Maddie…”

I sighed. “What do you want to know?”

“What’s your favorite subject in school?”

“Recess.”

She raised an eyebrow, but didn’t respond. “Okay, so school isn’t your thing. What do you like to do?”

“Not much.”

“What do you like to eat?”

“Caviar.”

“Favorite movie?”

“Don’t like movies.”

“Music?”

I shrugged.

She put her pen and notebook down on the table beside her, then stood up to go to the door.

“Where are you going?” I asked. “I thought we were talking.”

Turning back towards me, she shook her head. “I thought you were ready for this, but I guess not. I’m just going to call the nurse to come and take you back to your room.”

I thought about the nurse patting the pack where he was keeping the extra syringe. “So if I don’t talk, I get drugged up again?” I asked.

“No, as long as you stay calm, there won’t be any reason for that.”

The nurse came back with the wheelchair. I stood up a little easier, and sat back down in the chair of my own volition, determined to stay as calm as possible, so as not to give him any excuse.

“I’ll see you again tomorrow. Maybe you’ll feel a bit more like talking then,” Dr. Whalen said as I was wheeled out of the room.

 

* * *

One thing I hadn’t counted on was how boring it was now that I was awake. There was no phone, no TV, no books. Nothing at all in the room except for the bed. As the lock to the room clicked shut behind the nurse I had to fight the urge to rage at being left like this, with nothing but my own thoughts. I didn’t even have a clock to know what time it was, or when I might see another person again.

My body wasn’t about to let me go to sleep. I counted holes in the ceiling tiles, tried to tell myself a story, anything to make the time pass faster. I could feel every nerve, every pore in my skin. By the time an orderly unlocked the door to bring in my food, I was about ready to throw myself out the window - if it weren’t for the fact that the window had iron bars on it.

“Dinner,” he said abruptly, dropping the tray onto the bedside table.

“Can I get a TV in here?” I asked without any preamble.

He snorted in response and started heading for the door. “A book? A magazine? Anything?” I begged, getting up off the bed and going after him.

He turned toward me; he wasn’t huge, but definitely big enough to be physically intimidating. “Stuff like that’s a privilege,” he told me. “You have to earn it. Doc has to give permission.” And with that, he left the room, pulling the door shut behind him.

I tried the door handle, even though I knew it was pointless; I was pretty sure the doors automatically locked as soon as they closed. Looking over at the food tray, I had to work at not throwing it across the room in frustration. I was hungry, too. Obviously they’d done something to keep me from starving to death while I was drugged up, but I didn’t remember the last time I’d had real food.

Lifting the lid off the tray I realized I still wasn’t going to get real food: it was disgusting, but it would fill me up, so I ate the lukewarm chicken soup, and the soggy vegetables, and even the greyish-colored meatloaf. 

And when it was all gone, I was still alone.

I shoved the tray on to the floor with all of my strength, listening to the crash with a smug grin. But nothing happened. No one came to yell at me. No one came to clean it up. Nothing. 

Time crawled by; I slept for a few minutes here and there; I sat, angry and bitter; I waited for morning.

 

* * *

A different orderly came, bringing breakfast. After that, a nurse came in with clean hospital pajamas and some toiletries. She went into my little bathroom and unlocked the door to the shower. “You can put your dirty clothes on the bed. I’ll take them with me when you’re done,” she told me as she turned on the shower.

I stared at her; she didn’t look as though she had any intention of leaving.

“Come on, I haven’t got all day,” she said, poking her head back out into the bedroom.

“I’m not showering in front of you!” I protested.

She rolled her eyes. “It’s a little late for modesty,” she said. “We’ve been cleaning you up for the past two weeks. Besides, I’ve got better things to think about than what you look like naked. One body is the same as any other after a while here. Now come on, or you’re going to miss your appointment with the doctor, and my schedule is totally going to get messed up.”

I was praying that I could convince the doctor to let me have a TV, or some books or something, so I didn’t want to miss that appointment. But it was no less humiliating to strip off my grungy hospital scrubs in front of this woman watching my every move and walk naked to the shower stall, which had a clear plastic curtain so that she could still see me. By the time I got into the shower, I was crying, but at least the water hid the tears.

As quickly as possible I cleaned myself up and washed my hair. It would have felt good if I hadn’t been in such a horrifying situation. The nurse handed me a small, scratchy white towel to dry off. I couldn’t even manage to cover myself to walk back to the bed to get the clean pajamas, but I tried not to let her see how humiliated I was.

Once I was dressed again, she closed the door to the shower stall, took the toiletries and dirty laundry and left the room. She came back a few minutes later with a wheelchair.

“I don’t need that,” I told her. “I can walk.”

“Sit,” she ordered. 

I sat.

She wheeled me down the corridor until we were in front of Dr. Whalen’s office again. She knocked, and Dr. Whalen opened the door. The nurse pushed the chair into the office, spoke quietly to the doctor for a moment, then left.

“How are you feeling today, Madeleine?” Dr. Whalen asked, motioning me over to the couch. I got up and walked over to sit down. 

“You can’t keep me locked up like that, with nothing!” I said, trying not to sound crazy in my desperation.

The doctor sat down in the chair opposite me, her notebook and pen in hand. “You were quite violent when you first arrived here. Do you remember that?” she asked. “With our patients who have those type of issues, we have to reintroduce privileges slowly. If you can get through our session today, we can discuss the first stage of reintroduction. Do you think you can do that?”

I nodded, looking down at my feet. “Can I ask you something?”

“Of course,” Dr. Whalen replied.

“What is this place? A nut house? Where am I?”

She sighed. “After the incident at your school, you were taken to the hospital, and put under a psychiatric hold, where it was determined that you required further treatment. Your parents made the decision that they would prefer private care, and so you were referred here, to our facility. It isn’t a ‘nut house’; it’s a private hospital for diagnosis and treatment of mental illness.”

“I’m not crazy,” I told her.

“No one said that you are,” she replied, “but after what happened, clearly you are a very troubled young woman, and it’s my job to find out why, and how we can best help you.”

It suddenly hit me. “You said my parents put me here? My mother wouldn’t…”

“It was your father, Maddie. He made the arrangements, with your mother’s agreement.”

I scowled. “He would want me locked up,” I muttered. “I want to go home to my mother.”

“That is obviously our goal here, but we’re going to need to spend some time together, you and I, and talk through a few things. Okay?”

“Fine. Whatever I have to do to go home.”

“All right. Let’s just start with some easy ones. How old are you?”

I had to think for a moment. “I suppose it depends how long I’ve actually been here,” I said. “I think I’m fifteen. I’ll be sixteen in November.”

She smiled. “You haven’t been here that long, so yes, I guess you’re still fifteen. What grade are you in?”

“Tenth.”

“Where were you born?”

My shoulders tensed up just thinking about it. “New Harmony, Indiana,” I told her, hoping we could get away from this line of questioning quickly.

“How old were you when you left there?”

“Eight.” Every muscle in my body was tense, rigid.

“Why did you move away?”

“I was eight. How should I know?” Dr. Whalen raised an eyebrow at me. It was enough to remind me to behave myself. “They said we needed a fresh start.” At least that much was true.

“Where did you go?”

“Terre Haute.”

“How long did you stay there?”

I had to think. “A year, maybe two. I don’t remember now.”

“Why did you move that time?”

“My mom and I got kicked out of our apartment.”

“Where was your father?”

I gritted my teeth, trying to stay calm. “Do we have to talk about him?” I asked, as politely as I could manage.

She paused for a moment and stared at me, then wrote something down in her notebook. “We don’t have to talk about him today, but I think you know we’re going to have to talk about him eventually.”

“Fine,” I said, relieved for the moment, at least.

We went through the rest of the places my mom and I had lived: after Terre Haute was Muncie, then Carmel, then Kokomo, then back to Muncie, and most recently, Fort Wayne. “Why do you move so often? Always looking for a fresh start?” she asked.

I was torn between loyalty to my mother, and wanting to give her what she wanted so that I wouldn’t be locked in that bare room by myself all the time. “She has trouble holding a job,” I said finally. “She has problems with her health.”

Dr. Whalen made another note. She asked what I thought of school in general, how I felt about moving schools so often. Did I find it hard to make friends? Finally, she capped her pen and put down it down on the table with the notebook. “Okay, that’s good, Maddie. We’ve made some progress. I’ll see you again tomorrow.”

“I did what you wanted, right? So do I get some privileges? A TV? My phone? Something?” My voice was panicky, but I didn’t care. I couldn’t go back to that empty room for another whole day by myself.  
She stared at me for a few seconds, as if thinking about it, and I thought I would throw up waiting to hear her answer. “I’ll ask the nurse to take you to our library,” she said. “You may choose some reading material to take back with you.”

“That’s it?” I asked, trying not to cry.

“For today. I told you, Madeleine: this goes in stages. The longer you cooperate, the more privileges you will receive in return. For today, that will have to do.”

There was a knock at the door, and the nurse was there to take me back to my room. Dr. Whalen gave her instructions that I was to be taken to the library for ten minutes, and allowed to choose a few books or magazines to take back with me.

Glumly, I sat back in the wheelchair. Fifteen minutes later, two ragged paperback novels on my lap in my bed, I heard the lock of my door click behind her as the nurse left me all alone again.


	7. Chapter 7

It was two more days of inane questions that I answered as politely and calmly as I could before she agreed to let me thirty minutes a day of supervised time in the computer lab. And when I say supervised, I mean supervised. A nurse had to sit beside me the entire time, watching everything that I did, and reading over my shoulder if I typed anything at all. It was something, at least. But I still wasn’t allowed any interaction with any of the other residents, I still had to be supervised in the shower, and I still had to stay in my locked room for the other 22 hours or so that I wasn’t with Dr. Whalen, or in the library or computer lab.

But on the fourth day of our visits, she stopped asking interview questions, and started with the real stuff. My heart pounded in my chest. I didn’t want to talk about any of it, but she had made it clear that if I stopped cooperating, my privileges would stop, too.

She started out that day with her usual friendly chat, but then she just went straight into it: “That day at school, why did you get so upset when you found out that your father was coming?”

_Shit, here we go…_ “I don’t want anything to do with him,” I answered.

“Why not?”

“He took off on my mom and me.”

“That must have been difficult,” she said with a sympathetic head tilt.

“Nah, piece of cake,” I said with a sneer.

Dr. Whalen gave me a look, and I knew I was going too far. “I don’t blame him for leaving me, but he shouldn’t have left my mom. She needed him.”

She wrote something down in her notebook before speaking again. “Didn’t you need him, too?”

“It doesn’t matter what I need.”

“Why not?”

I still don’t know what made me do it; I knew better, had always known better, but I did it. “Because I did bad things.”

Dr. Whalen looked up from her notes. “People do bad things, Maddie. It doesn’t mean that they don’t deserve the love and support of their parents.”

“They don’t do the kind of things that I did. Or, that she did, I guess, but to my father it’s all the same, and I can’t blame him for that.”

I started to feel a panic deep in my stomach as I realized what I had done, but it was too late to turn back. Dr. Whalen wasn’t going to let me. She stared at me, not with any kind of anger or fear, just with interest. “What does that mean? _‘She did’_?”

“I didn’t mean that…” I started to say, trying to fix things before it got worse.

“I think you did, Maddie. Who is ‘she’?” Dr. Whalen was insistent, and I wanted to get up and run.

“It was just me, okay? I was the one who did the bad things, no one else. I didn’t mean to say that.” Despite my attempts to keep control of myself, I was getting hysterical.

She sighed and sat back in her chair. “All right: then what is it that you did that you think made your father leave?”

“It doesn’t matter,” I mumbled. I knew I was going to end up losing privileges for this, but what was I supposed to say?

“Maddie, if we’re going to really make any progress, you have to trust me. Nothing that you say will leave this room, but you need to be completely honest with me, or I can’t help you.”

Anger bubbled up inside me. She wasn’t going to understand, no one did. No one knew the truth except for my parents, and those men in our house that night. So either I told the truth, and she’d think I was crazy, or I didn’t tell her anything, and I’d just end up locked in that room by myself for the rest of my life. Either way, I was screwed - again - because of Lilith. “Well, first I made my parents celebrate my birthday every day for two weeks, and I wouldn’t let them leave the house to go to work…”

Dr. Whalen didn’t seem too perturbed by this, but then I kept going. “…and then I threw my father against a wall, and I killed my cat, and one of our neighbors. Oh, and my grandfather. I don’t think I’d want to hang around if my kid did all of that, do you?” I spat the words out, and then burst into tears.

To her credit, the doctor didn’t immediately get up and run from the room, or call me a liar. Despite a momentary alarm in her eyes, she actually stayed quite calm. “Why did you do all of that?” she asked.

“She made me,” I whispered between sobs.

“Who did?”

I buried my head in my hands before saying the one thing I hadn’t intended to ever tell anyone. “Lilith. The demon who possessed me.”

 

* * *

Dr. Whalen stayed quite calm as I sobbed out my story. She listened, made notes, and sometimes appeared deep in thought, but she didn’t run, she didn’t scream, and she didn’t call me a liar.

When I finished, I waited for her to say something, but she didn’t. “Do you believe me?” I finally asked, hating myself for it, even as I did it.

She looked up from her notes, slowly placed her pen down, and blinked before answering. “I believe you’ve been through a horrible trauma,” she said.

“I knew you wouldn’t believe me,” I snarled, sinking into myself.

“I didn’t say that,” she rebuked, raising an eyebrow.

I rolled my eyes. “It doesn’t matter anyway,” I muttered.  
“Maddie, whether I believe that you were possessed by a demon or not, and I’m not saying I do or I don’t, you have obviously been through a trauma that no one should go through. You were obviously violated, in a terrible way. In a way, what you’re describing to me is like a rape, don’t you think?”

I stared at her, but I didn’t make a snarky remark, and for the first time I felt a slight curiosity about what she would say next. “Maybe,” I said finally, wanting her to go on.

“Control of your body was taken away from you; you were invaded. How is that any different than rape?” she asked.

“Well the demon didn’t fuck me,” I said without thinking.

She didn’t even flinch at my language. “Maybe not in a sexual way, but rape isn’t about sex, is it? It’s about power. And from what you’re describing, this ‘demon’ had power over you. Over your body. If we were talking about someone else, and I said that they’d had their body invaded without permission, and were forced to perform acts against their will, what would you assume had happened?”

“Rape,” I admitted, my voice barely more than a whisper. It had never occurred to me to think about it like that. I felt powerless, small, and sad, thinking of my eight-year-old self, and how she had tried so hard to fight Lilith off.

“You said that your father blamed you for the things you did when your body was out of your control. That happens to rape victims, too, sometimes.”

“I’ve heard of families who blame their daughters and sisters for their own rapes,” I said, as I curled up tight into a ball in the chair. “Sometimes they even kill them.”

“In some cases, yes. It’s horrible, isn’t it?” she asked me.

“Maybe my parents would have been happier if I’d died, too. They wouldn’t be faced with a reminder every time they looked at me.”

Dr. Whalen sighed. “Do you really think that’s how they think of you?”

I actually took a moment to consider the question. “My mom… she was never sad like this before. She was the best mom ever. And afterward she still tried to do all the right things. Sometimes she tried TOO hard to do the right things. But I know she’s scared of me.”

“And your father?”

I snorted. “My father put me in here.”

“You did have a seriously violent episode in your school office. And a history of problems in school, even a couple of arrests…”

“The charges were dropped!” I protested. “And I only freaked out that day because they called HIM. He hadn’t bothered to see me or Mom for years, so why did it matter what he thought about me skipping class, or not handing in assignments? He never cared until someone called him out on it.”

“It must have hurt when your father left.”

“It was better than having him there. Do you know what it’s like to have your parents look at you, and be able to tell that they’re afraid of you?”

“No, I don’t,” she replied. She didn’t take her eyes off me.

I was shaking, and I didn’t want to talk anymore. I wanted her to stop watching me. For the first time since I’d been fully awake I just wanted to be alone in my room. “Are we almost done?” I asked, with more of a whimper than I would have liked.

Dr. Whalen looked up at the clock. “The nurse will be back to pick you up in five more minutes. Why?”

No matter how hard I squeezed my eyes shut, tears still escaped down my cheeks. I pulled my knees up to my chest and bent my face down to them. I couldn’t answer her.

She sighed, put down her pen and notebook, and stood up. At first I thought she was going to hug me, and I recoiled, but she just pulled a bottle of water from her little fridge and handed it to me before sitting back down.

We didn’t talk any more, and when the nurse came back for me I left without another word.


	8. Chapter Eight

_November 2015_

I had been seeing Dr. Whalen for nearly six months. I knew she would never believe my story of demon possession, so over time I had carefully allowed her to steer the conversation towards the possession itself being a metaphor for something else. I talked about it so much, in fact, that sometimes I could almost believe it was the truth. 

And sometimes, it even seemed to be helping.

Once it was allowed, my mom would sporadically come to visit, and participated in sessions with Dr. Whalen. She was confused at first when the made up assault story came up, but to her credit she caught on quickly. It wasn’t long until I felt sure she had convinced herself it was actually the truth. I thought it was probably for the best: maybe it would allow her to finally heal, too.

My father was another story. From the first time he visited, I could tell he was resentful of being coerced (or at least that was my assumption) into participating. He’d probably thought he could get me locked up there, and pay the bills but otherwise never have to think about me again. But in order to keep up the no doubt carefully crafted “caring father” image he’d been working on from the moment he’d signed the paperwork, he needed to be present, and for the first time in seven years, he needed to acknowledge at least part of what had happened to us… to me.

I didn’t talk much that first session. I let Dr. Whalen talk, and I watched my father’s reaction. His face contorted with effort as he tried to tell his side of the story without mentioning that a demon wearing my skin had thrown him against a wall, and later killed his father. I might have struggled not to laugh, if a cloud of tension hadn’t hung over the room like droplets of toxic fog.

He rushed out after the session, giving me a quick kiss on the forehead. His expression as he pulled away from me was as if he had been asked to kiss a crocodile with a contagious skin disease.

The next time he visited, Dr. Whalen started asking me questions about him. I felt put on the spot, even more than the time she’d asked me how I felt my mother had coped with what happened, with my mother sitting right beside me. “I understand why he didn’t want to be around me anymore,” I answered carefully.

“It’s not that I didn’t want…” my father started to say, but Dr. Whalen held up her hand to stop him. “Why is that?” she asked me.

“The things that happened,” I replied, “the bad things. They may not have been my fault, but they…” I paused, unsure how to phrase it so that it would make sense both to him, and to the therapist.

“They what?” Dr Whalen finally asked.

“The bad things… had my face… that probably doesn’t make any sense, but I just mean that I understand that when he looks at me, he has trouble seeing anything other than the bad things. I don’t blame him for that. I would probably feel the same way, if I were him.”

I glanced towards my father without turning my head, afraid to let him see me looking at him. He looked devastated by my words, remorseful even, for the very first time, and I had to look away before it made me cry.

“I don’t want it to be like that,” I heard him say, barely louder than a whisper. “Logically… no, there is no logic to any of this… it wasn’t easy to accept, but I know that it wasn’t my Maddie who did those things, but whenever I remember it, all I see is her… I don’t know who else to see in the picture. I don’t know how to change it.”

The doctor set her notebook and pen down on the small table beside her chair, uncrossed her legs and leaned forward just slightly, towards my father. “Do you want to change it?” she asked. There was no judgment in her tone; it was a simple question.

He closed his eyes, took a deep breath; his head bowed as if he couldn’t bear to look up. He rested his elbows on his knees, his forehead on the palms of his hands. “I don’t know,” he said. “I just want to it to finally be over.”

 

* * *

_February 2016_

When the time finally came for me to leave the hospital, I almost didn’t want to. Over time I had been given more freedom to move around as I chose, to spend time with some of the other patients. I’d been able to study, and earn some credits for when I inevitably had to go back to high school. I’d even met someone, and had the first real relationship I’d ever had in my life. It didn’t last that long: once she was released from the hospital I never heard from her again, despite her promises to the contrary. But it was still important to me.

I was afraid of the outside world. For the first time since I was eight years old, I felt peaceful and secure, and I didn’t know what would happen outside of the locked hospital doors.

There had been a lot of discussion over where I was going to live. My mom had managed to stay healthy for several months, and seemed to be doing well at her job. But my dad had a house - a small one, but still a house - in a decent school district. My relationship with him had improved, but it still had a long way to go. But if I lived with him, I could continue to work online to earn credits until the fall, and then have a fresh start in the fall. None of the teachers or students would know me, or my history. Maybe I could just fade into the background, work hard, and try to have something normal.

But what if it didn’t work? What if the only way I knew how to survive high school was by being angry, and acting out? What if I fell back into smoking, and drinking, and… other things? I asked Dr. Whalen that over and over; she just asked me if that was what I really wanted.

“How do I know what I want? I don’t even know how to have a normal life at school! I’ve never had it! What if I go in, and within the first five minutes I’ve screwed everything up?” I asked, a few days before I was scheduled to leave. I was panicking, angry; my heart was pounding in my chest.

“We’ve talked about this,” Dr. Whalen answered patiently. “If you’d feel better finishing school by correspondence, no one will blame you. It’s your decision to make. But personally, I think you are much stronger than you give yourself credit for, Maddie. And given a fresh start I don’t see any reason why you can’t succeed. You deserve it, you know that, right?”

I couldn’t help it: images of all of the horrible things Lilith had done using my body flashed before my eyes. “It wasn’t me; it wasn’t my fault…” I whispered to myself. The images started to slowly fade away, like waking up from a particularly vivid bad dream, but I still wasn’t really convinced that I had control over it. 

All I could do was try, though. I was still going to see Dr. Whalen as an outpatient for a while, and my parents would continue their therapy, too. It wasn’t something that was going to just one day miraculously be all better, but I was starting to see every day that I got through as another in a series of small victories that would eventually win the war.

 

* * *

_September 2016_

I’d finally decided to go to my father’s, despite the guilt I felt from my mom. I promised her that I would spend as much time with her as I could, but if I was going to get through my last years of high school smoothly, it just seemed to make sense to be in a better school. Over the first several months that I was there, I worked as hard as I could to catch up as many credits as I could, so that I could start my junior year along with everyone else my age.

The first day that I walked into the school I nearly froze. I could barely even speak when spoken to, I was so terrified. I sat in the back of the class, tried not to look around at the other students, and breathed a sigh of relief as each class ended. It wasn’t until I was safely back in my room at home that night that I realized the only difference between how things had been that day, and every other day of my previous high school experience, was that I had actually listened to the teachers and written down the assignments.

I sat on my bed, and pulled out the journal that Dr. Whalen had encouraged me to start writing in.

_The kids are the same as the kids at every school. Some of them are smart, some are stupid. Some are smart, but will never do well in school. The teachers are the same: some who are young and idealistic, and want to make a difference, some who should have retired years ago, some who are actually good at what they do and care about their students. So does that mean that I have to be the same? No one knows me. No one has any preconceived notions of who I should be. No one knows who I am, or what I’ve done - I mean, what SHE did. So how do I not mess this up? In theory it should be easy, but it wasn’t. I was so scared, and not of them, or anything like that. Just scared that I would mess everything up again. And all of this over the past year - it would have been nothing but a waste._

I put down my pen and stared out the window. I had no idea what would happen next, but all I could do was try.


	9. Chapter 9

_May 2018_

My muscles had already started to tense just seeing the name of the town on the sign as I drove past its border, but by the time I slowed the car in front of the house the tension in my shoulders and neck had caused a raging headache.

The first thing I noticed was that someone had painted the trim a different colour: it used to be sort of greenish brown hue, but now it was blue. Even the front door and the garage doors were blue. The tree in the front yard had grown, and all of my mother’s flowers were gone, replaced by wood mulch and some flowering bushes.

I was surprised to find that I was able to observe all of this with a feeling of cool detachment. I don’t know exactly what I had expected; perhaps to have immediate flashbacks, to start screaming in terror, to drive away before it all came flooding back. But this house, this house which for a short while had held unimaginable horror, was just sitting there: a suburban house like any other in the neighbourhood.

Although I’d known where I was going when I started driving, I hadn’t known exactly why. I still didn’t. I just knew that, ten years later, I needed to see it. 

I couldn’t very well go up to the door and ask to see inside. I wasn’t even sure that I wanted to see inside. If I sat in the car this way, outside their house, the new owners would probably think I was some kind of crazy psycho, or that I was casing the place to rob it. But sitting and staring seemed all I was able to do.

And all of these thoughts in my head were probably why I didn’t notice another car pull up. If I had, I would have noticed how out-of-place the old black muscle car looked among all the minivans and high-class sedans of the area. And I probably would have noticed that the driver looked even more out of place.

But when I did get out of my car, my eyes were drawn to him right away, standing beside his. I was no good at judging adults’ ages, and had no idea how old he was, except that he wasn’t ancient, like my father, and he definitely wasn’t my age. He wore a red button-down shirt over a dark gray t-shirt, and beat-up jeans that were probably black at some point. I wondered if he was there to do some construction work, or maybe he was a plumber or something. There was no way he lived in one of these houses.

He didn’t even glance in my direction. He was staring at something.

He was staring at my house.

Not MY house. Not anymore. But the house. He was staring at it.

And now I was staring at him, staring at the house. And the longer I stared at him, the more something started to bother me about him. I didn’t know him, but I could swear that I knew exactly what he would sound like if he started to speak to me.

No, not speak: yell. I’d only ever heard him yell. 

_It’s not her. It’s not in the girl anymore!_

My legs felt weak, and I nearly fell to the ground; I had to hang on to the car door for support. Why was he here? Was he looking for me? Was Lilith back? The very thought made my breath catch in my throat. As I struggled to control my mounting panic I must have cried out, because suddenly he turned and saw me there. He looked at me, eyes narrowed as he struggled to figure out how he knew me. But I knew that he knew me, and I knew that he would figure it out, sooner or later.

_I should leave. I need to leave. I need to get out of here before he figures out who I am._

Shaking, I started to lower myself back into the driver’s seat.

“Hey!” I heard him call out as I was about to close the door. 

My hand shook so badly that the keys fell out onto my lap, and as I tried to shut the door they fell to the ground beside the car. I swore under my breath as I leaned down to pick them up, but before I could, I saw a brown work boot step on top of them.

“I’d like my keys, please,” I said, trying to sound calmer than I felt.

He ignored me. “You’re her, aren’t you? Lilith?”

My stomach lurched at the very mention of her name. For a split-second I heard my eight-year-old voice in my head singsonging, _“My name is Lilith!”_

“That’s not my name!” I snapped at the man. “My keys, please.”

“Oh… yeah, I guess not…” he mumbled. “But you’re her, aren’t you? Not… _her_ her, but…”

“Just stop before you hurt yourself!” I hadn’t meant to say something so harsh sounding, but I still didn’t know who he was - exactly - or why he was there. For all I knew he was going to try and kill me.

He bent down and pulled my keys from under his foot. He didn’t hand them over, though. He crouched there, beside my car, and looked at me, stared at me. I should have still felt threatened, but all of a sudden, I didn’t.

“So what is your real name?” he asked. “I’m Dean, by the way.” 

His face had softened somewhat, as if he’d realized I was afraid, and he didn’t want me to be. Still, I hesitated, not at all certain that I wanted to have this conversation. “You stopped the other one from killing me,” I said. “Even when my mother was begging him to. You told him not to.”

“You remember,” he said. “How much?”

“All of it,” I answered. “And my name is Madeleine - Maddie.”

He glanced over at the house again. “Do you and your family still live here?” he asked.

“No!” I said, my response so vehement that he immediately turned back to me. I softened my tone. “We moved out right after that night, and we never went back. This is the first time I’ve seen the place in ten years.”

“Then I guess suggesting we go inside to talk probably won’t work,” he said with a slight smirk. “Tell you what? How about we find a place to get a burger? Suddenly I’m starving.”

I turned my attention back to my former home, the place that was the centre of so many nightmares over the past ten years. I’d known I needed to see it, but now I had, and I knew I was done. I inhaled deeply, letting out the air from my lungs slowly. “Okay, sure,” I told him.

 

* * *

The story he told me as we ate made my head spin. I had spent two weeks as an eight-year-old possessed by a demon, and I still had trouble believing it. I picked up the lettuce I’d discarded from my burger and nibbled at it as I tried to process the information.

“So you’re telling me that after she left me, she took possession of the body that a different demon had been possessing, and then ordered demonic dogs to kill you and drag your soul to Hell?”

“Yep,” he said nonchalantly before taking another enormous bite of the second burger he’d ordered.

“But you’re not dead?”

“Not currently, no.”

I stared at him. “How is that possible?”

He mumbled, mouth full of burger, but it sounded like “rescued by an angel.” And I nearly got up and left at that point, but I didn’t, and when I pressed for more details, he shook his head. “Don’t ask.” Then he paused, chewing more slowly as he thought. He swallowed the food in his mouth before speaking again. 

“There’s something you should probably know; at least, I’d want to know if I were you.” He picked up his soda and took a long drink, as I waited, growing more concerned about what he was about to say. “Lilith is dead,” he said finally. “I don’t know if it’s something you worried about, thinking she might come back, but she’s been dead for eight years now.”

The information settled into my brain slowly. “What do you mean, dead? Isn’t a demon already… not exactly alive?”

“Well, yeah, technically. They’re spirits, twisted by decades, or centuries of torture in Hell. And Lilith… she was one of the biggies. But she’s gone. You never have to worry about her again. If you were, that is.”

“How do you know she’s dead?”

“Because my brother killed her. And believe me, that’s all you want to know.”

I nodded while I continued to work through it all, but I started to feel a weight lifting off my shoulders. “I’m glad she’s dead,” I said, my voice far more calm and steady than my nerves.

He smiled slightly, and I noticed again the freckles scattered across his face, which made him look young, despite the look in his eyes that made him seem much older. “Me too,” he replied.

We talked for a while longer, and I told him some of what had happened over the past ten years. He listened intently as I spoke, and never seemed like he didn’t believe me, or was judging me. 

When I finally finished I was slightly teary, and he handed me a napkin off the food tray before he said anything. “You know something? I’ve been hunting since I was a kid, dealing with demons way too often since I was twenty-six. And I’ve only ever once met up with someone again after they’d been possessed for more than a few minutes and lived. And he was a total whack job - not because of the demon possession, mind you… he was just a psycho.”

“Good to know,” I said, not sure where he was going with this line of thinking.

“It’s just… the truth is that not many people possessed by demons live to tell the tale in the first place. The demons, they don’t care, and sometimes they even think it’s fun to destroy the body to the point that it can’t survive once the demon leaves. So that’s rare enough, but you survived _Lilith_. Did you know that she was the very first demon ever created? Basically one step down from Lucifer himself.”

He said this so matter of factly that I cringed. “Oh, sorry,” he said when he noticed my expression. “But that’s the thing: do you know how special you are? There aren’t many people in this world who could’ve survived what you did. So yeah, you had a rough time of it, but in the end? You’re still here. And she isn’t.”

 

* * *

After we finished eating, we walked back out to the parking lot. “I know this sounds crazy,” I said to Dean before I could stop myself, “but do you think we were meant to meet up like this today? I mean, it was just so random, both of us there at the same time.”

“You know, after I came back, especially before we killed Lilith, I used to have nightmares about her. And she always had your face. Well, your face when you were a kid. It’s been… kind of good, getting to see who you actually are, and how you turned out. I’m not generally a fan of fate, but maybe this wasn’t so much fate as a bit of intercession. Although I’m not usually one to believe that happens, either… Kid, I don’t know why we met up today, but I’m glad we did.” 

Dean gave me a crooked grin as he unlocked the door of his car. I had to stifle a smirk at the fact he was actually unlocking it, and with a key. That car was OLD. But I wasn’t going to tell him that; he seemed pretty attached to it.  
I thought about how my life was finally starting to settle down: my first year of college over, my parents were doing okay, mostly, and I was starting to feel like I could honestly say I felt _normal_ , for the first time in as long as I could remember. But having met

Dean, and hearing the story from his point of view, knowing the truth about Lilith, it was like a salve to my still bruised soul. I felt taller, stronger… _freer._

I gave Dean a smile of my own as I pressed the button to unlock my car. “I’m glad we did, too,” I told him.

And then I slipped behind the wheel, and drove off into the rest of my life.


End file.
